Everybody who is acquainted with the details of Aleister Crowley’s magical career knows one thing (maybe a few more things than that, but to simplify we shall stick with one) – in 1904 e.v., he received, on the dates of 08, 09, and 10 of April, via dictation, The Book of the Law, in Cairo. This is known to posterity as the Cairo Working. Some will agree with the old man himself that he was predestined to receive that work, at that specific time and place. Others will say it is merely the contents of his subconscious mind. Our conclusion is that he was certainly in the right place at the right time, and that he certainly did receive a contact.
Before we spend time in Cairo, in the next section of this work-in-progress, we shall look at a few items pertaining to the year or so before he arrived there and made history. The year before the Cairo Working took place is as important as the year it did take place. J. F. C. Fuller, in The Temple of Solomon the King, gives little notice of this period. Indeed, it was a rather fallow period, magically speaking, but that is usually when important things take place that have a more profound effect on one’s magical career:
So
we {360} find that from November 1901 he did no practices of any kind until the
Spring Equinox of 1904, with the exception of a casual week in the summer of 1903,
and an exhibition game of magic in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid in
November 1903, when by his invocations he filled that chamber with a brightness
as of full moonlight,< 1903 was spent, for the most part, travelling, exploring,
hunting, since the previous couple of years had been spent studying yoga, in addition
to the above mentioned activities. Crowley was in his Buddhist Skeptic phase.
Mysticism did not interest him at the time, climbing every mountain, and perhaps
falling in love, these were his interests. Published works of the time were: 1.
New Year, 1903. 2. Berashith, an Essay in
Ontology. 3. Balzac. 4.
Summa Spes. 5. Ahab and other Poems, printed
at the Chiswick Press. 6. Alice: An Adultery. 7.
Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden (although it has been stated by
people like Martin P. Starr, that the dirty deed was done after the Cairo Working,
and probably not dirt cheap either!) 8. The Star and the
Garter. 9. The God-Eater. A
lot of these pieces ended up in The Collected Works, and there are
other pieces, like Science and Buddhism, Time, and
the other essays at the end of Volume Two of The Collected Works,
which were either written and/or published in 1903. New Year, 1903,
and Snowdrops were not published in The Collected Works. So,
then, we have about a dozen pieces published at this time. Quite prolific considering
everything else that was going on. The essays published at this time are really
some of his best pieces. We have noticed an excerpt from Science and Buddhism
in part two of the present work-in-progress. The short piece, New Year, 1903,
in a sense, set the general tone for the year: NEW YEAR,
1903. O friends and brothers! Hath the year deceased,
And ye await the bidding to fare well? How
shall ye fare, thus bound of fate in hell? How, whom no light
hath smitten, and released? Ye trust perchance in god, or
man, or priest? Ay! Let them serve you, let them save you!
Spell The name that guards the human citadel, And
answer if your course hath checked or ceased. Path
of the eightfold star! Be thou revealed! Isle of Nirvana
be the currents curled About thee, that the swimmers touch
thy shore! Thought be your sword, and virtue be your shield!
Press on! Who conquers shall for evermore Pass
from the fatal mischief of the world. From
Aleister Crowley Wishing you a speedy termination of existence.
Outside of remaining matters in the Horos affair, and attempting
to resume the Abramelin Working, there really were no pressing Magical activities
in which Crowley participated. He consulted a “sybil” in Paris, at the behest
of “Frater D. A.” – as per Fuller’s account of the story, concerning the Horos
matter. From The Eye in the Triangle, by Israel Regardie: “Off
then to Europe he went, arriving in Paris in November [n.b., in 1902 e.v.], to
stay there until April of the next year, 1903. “Here in Paris,
he was joined by his old friend Gerald Kelly the painter, and together they proceeded
to paint the town red. Naturally, he had to re-visit his old superior and chief
in the Order, MacGregor Mathers. But whatever the tie was that once had bound
them together, Crowley found this time it had dissipated. Very quickly they drifted
apart. Crowley made some nasty allegations concerning Mathers and his wife which
were typical of Crowley at his worst. The attainment of Dhyana had done nothing
to transform his character. His vices remained the same. His neurotic character-structure
remained unaltered. His spiritual attainments are unequivocal, but they did nothing
for the rest of him. “Kelly introduced Crowley to a clairvoyante
in Paris. Let her be called Sybil only, for the sake of the record. Under Crowley’s
direction, she ‘traveled to’ or ‘perceived’ that Mathers and his wife were obsessed.
This word was used not in the modern psychiatric sense, but in an occult sense.
Their own ‘selves’ had been forced out of their bodies which were now occupied,
of all things, by Mr. and Mrs. Horos. Whose bodies at that very moment were incarcerated
in an English prison. It is an unlikely story, but this is the one that Crowley
professed to believe. It is evident that he needed some pretext of this kind in
order to have an incentive for demoting Mathers from his Chieftainship of the
Order. Now he had no further loyalty to Mathers. There was nothing to stop him
from laying claim to the leadership of the Order whenever he felt ready to step
into those shoes. The way had been cleared. Only time was required for him to
take the next step, and the occasion appeared during the year 1909. “Having
got rid of Mathers, there was nothing once more to keep him in Paris. So he returned
to England, and by May had gone north to his house at Boleskine in Scotland, again
intending to complete the magical retirement he had started when the Revolt broke
out years before. He had developed a thoroughly skeptical outlook so far as philosophy
was concerned. He admitted that certain phenomena did accompany the use of certain
ceremonial work; all he denied was their usefulness to the ‘white adept’. ...”
, pp. 261-2. Scrolling down to the next chapter of Regardie’s
book, we find his account of Crowley meeting Rose in 1903 e.v. “It
was in the year 1903, perhaps in July, that Kelly introduced his sister Rose to
Crowley. No great infatuation occurred right away, but through a series of fortuitous
events coupled with Crowley’s unequivocal romanticism he and Rose got married.
There was no courting, no engagement, no waiting. Impulsively they just decided
to get married. The original intent of the marriage was solely to assist Rose
to evade some other marriage repugnant to her. Crowley merely offered, in effect,
to let her use his name – and call it quits. Once, however, she was married to
Crowley, she made up her mind it was to be a marriage in fact, not merely in name.
“With the occurrence of this marriage, for a second time
the proposed Abramelin operation never had a chance to get more than started.
The first time was towards the close of the century, just before he had taken
his Adeptus Minor degree in Paris. He had offered his fortune and services to
Mathers at the time of the Revolt. At that time, too, the operation was premature.
“His account of the marriage indicated that it was an unblemished
and prolonged sexual debauch. It afforded him almost complete happiness. His poetry
reached some of its greatest and most sustained lyrical heights at that time.
There are several lengthy poems dedicated and devoted to Rose...” p. 268. So,
then, at this time, Crowley encounters Mathers in Paris, determines that the latter
has been taken over by the Horos couple, who in reality are sitting in an English
prison, in effect using Mathers as a dupe. Upon this discovery, he severs his
relationship with Mathers, and goes back to Boleskine to carry out his Abramelin
operation. The object of the Abramelin operation acted as a sort
of Maguffin for Crowley, much like the Secret of the Ninth Degree and the efficacy
of that Secret became a Maguffin for him years later. Finding himself meeting
Kelly’s sister, and vowing to help her out of her situation, he ended this Operation
yet again, and in its place married her on 12 August 1903 e.v., and proceeded
to plan for the honeymoon, which would take them across Asia. At
the time all this was happening, he was writing some of his best material, at
least as far as his early material was concerned. 1988 e.v., occupies the same
place in this reporter’s career. At least our “Rose” was strengthened by the events
which would follow, rather than becoming a dipso, but similar themes existed in
both cases. In addition to the poetic works, essays like Science and Buddhism,
which would seem to allude to his first experience, which got him started on the
Path, and might also act as a commentary to his later experiences from 1904 e.v.,
on, were written at this time. In reading the literature pertaining
to the Philadelphia Experiment, it is worth noting that the people involved in
writing this material state that every forty years in the chain of causality something
happens. Indeed, we have taken the forty year increments back to 1583 e.v., when
John Dee and Edward Kelly were experimenting with scrying. So,
on 12 August 1943 e.v., the worst of the experiments took place, the one which
we see in the film, and read about in the books. On that date in 1983 e.v., we
are told that a continuation of these experiments, known as the Montauk Project,
was sabotaged and and end was supposedly put to these kinds of research. Also,
on that date in 1983 e.v, the film version of The Philadelphia Experiment
came out. Forty years earlier, on that very date, 12 August, Aleister Crowley
marries Rose Kelly. Is that a part of the same chain of causality?
Perhaps. It certainly led him to Egypt in 1904 e.v., and the rest, as they say,
is history. 12 August 2003 c.e., Twin Cedars Lodge. Blessed
First Night of the Prophet and His Bride, `100 years today! SEE
ALSO: MORE
SURPRISES! Original Material Copyright ©
1999 - 2003 e.v., Jonathan Sellers. All Rights Reserved.
COMING: